


Interlude in Five Movements

by akire_yta



Category: SG: Atlantis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:50:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things that might have happened to Sgt. Bates…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude in Five Movements

**Author's Note:**

> **For** : [](http://lite-bright.livejournal.com/profile)[**lite_bright**](http://lite-bright.livejournal.com/) – I hope this is what you were after!  
>  **Notes** : Humour was a bit difficult with this pairing, so let's go for repressed feelings – and oh are they repressed! Also, since as far as I know, Bates has no first name, I gave him one. Ten points to whoever knows why I chose this name!  
>  **Kudos:**[](http://frostfire-17.livejournal.com/profile)[ **frostfire_17**](http://frostfire-17.livejournal.com/) and [](http://grey-bard.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://grey-bard.livejournal.com/)**grey_bard** went above and beyond on this one. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone.
> 
> Huge thanks to [](http://sperrywink.livejournal.com/profile)[**sperrywink**](http://sperrywink.livejournal.com/) for her Bates and Grodin hitlist which was a huge help in sorting out the timeline of events!  
>  Military culture details courtesy of [](http://daveamongus.livejournal.com/profile)[**daveamongus**](http://daveamongus.livejournal.com/) and his great guide to the USMC.

~#~

**1\. 1. Tick Before Tock  
 _  
_**“Everything in its place, said the wandering clock;  
Not tock before tick, but tick before tock.” 

Bates didn’t even notice them until one of his Marines at the end of the table muttered “I wish Sheppard would do something about those fucking fags.”

He looked up, across the half-filled room, and saw Grodin smiling indulgently as the hairy little guy next to him in the blue shirt babbled on, hands waving through the air like he was describing an explosion. Another two forming another pair. As people began to realize the shit they had landed in here in the Pegasus Galaxy, they had started looking for and finding comfort amongst their fellow expeditioners. This was the first homo couple he’d heard of, but he doubted they were the only one.

He looked down at his plate again, no longer hungry. “Ignore them, Matherson. They’re scientists. Unless they’re getting shot at, they’re not our problem.” He stood, and picked up his tray. “Are we clear?”

The grunt nodded sullenly. “Yes sarge.” Grudging, but it would do. He’d pass the word later, let them all know that what the geeks did on their own time was no concern of the military teams. He had already earned their respect, he would be obeyed.

He returned his plates to the kitchen, and headed for the transporters on auto-pilot.

_“It’s about the respect. You understand me, Corporal?”_

The fragment of memory rose up out of memory. Was that an instruction from his training, when he was just a grunt himself? Or was that part of his justification, a way of denying what they had never acknowledged, even between themselves. A way of keeping appropriate distance between a corporal and his CO.

His quarters were spartan, lacking decoration or any personal touches. Sergeant Bates kept his eyes on the blank wall as he stripped out of his dirty shirt, prepared himself for patrol, got on with his duty.

Simon Bates was elsewhere, thinking about the pair of dogtags in a box in the drawer and wondering what might have been.

~~~

**2\. Serving Two Masters _  
“For in everything he did he served the Greater Community…”_**

“That’s the absolute minimum we should do!” He can’t believe the man is blocking him on this. If she’s innocent, the only damage is to their overblown egos. And if she is betraying them, then they’ve contained a threat that could potentially destroy this city. His solution was win-win – yet they were heading towards appeasement and possible destruction instead. It just proved to Bates yet again that Major Sheppard was nothing more than a flyboy, used to seeing threats on a radar screen and the aftermath of a battle from his safe little seat at 20,000ft. “If Colonel Sumner was still here…”

Sheppard cuts him off before he can say another word. “He’s not – I am.” It took invoking the ghost of a dead man to finally get the kind of reaction he should be having to the threat the Athosians represents. It was occurring to Bates, not for the first time, that those nominally in command had it all backwards regarding the realities of their situation.

But it had been drilled into him from day one – the chain of command was inviolate. There was only one response. He grinds out a “Yes, sir,” even though all he wants to do is kick the asshole in the head until he _gets it_. The city is under threat. They are the soldiers, they have to deal with it. They can’t call for backup or fly back to the hangar and let others sort it out.

Was it going to take a Wraith invasion to make them all understand?

But Bates is a good soldier. He nods at the right places, makes his recommendations, doesn’t react when they ignore them or water them down until they’re as good as useless.

After he leaves the meeting, he finds the other good soldiers, the ones he knows he can trust. And he issues a few orders of his own. Then he returns to his bunk and heads straight for the shower.

If the Colonel were here, he wouldn’t have to resort to sordid politicking and backroom orders. He wouldn’t have to mentally stratify his men into groups – those who will follow him, those who will follow Weir and Sheppard, those who could go either way. He wouldn’t have to second-guess.

Everything was clear under the Colonel. He was a good soldier, and he knew how to lead by example. As he scrubs harshly at his skin, Bates indulges himself, replaying that meeting with the Colonel there, alive and whole and not devoured by the Wraith and destroyed by a fucking flyboy’s bullet.

It was clear to him that Fate had taken the wrong man that night in the hiveship. But that was how it had gone down, and he would just have to deal. But there was no way he was going to make allowances for Sheppard’s mistakes.

Bates gears up for the first of what promised to be many extra patrols. And he swears to a dead man that he would make him proud.

~~~  


**  
3\. Eidolon __**

**_“By a route obscure and lonely,  
Haunted by ill angels only”_ **

Bates can feel Marshall Sumner watching him from beyond the grave. It’s a slightly unsettling feeling, but one he’s gotten used to. Sumner’s ghost has been following him around Atlantis for months, holding him accountable for their teams.

Before Atlantis, before they shipped out to a future that contained pain and death and the Wraith, Sumner had taken him to one side. As soon as he had said “Simon,” Bates knew this wasn’t going to be a standard military briefing. They had served together, side by side and back to back, for nearly ten years. He could predict the other man’s movements from a single look.

They were like kind, soldiers and professionals. They had been trained to suppress their emotions to get the job done. Emotional responses could get you killed. Maybe that was what Marshall was actually trying to avoid, this emotional trap, by raising this spectre of connection that had linked them through duty after duty.

“Simon, I need someone I can trust at my back out there.”

“You can count on me, sir.”

A slight twitch that was the older man’s equivalent of a knowing smirk. “I know I can – in the field. But we’re going to be cut off out there for god knows how long. We’re gonna be relying on each other for everything. Plus there’s the civilians to worry about. People are gonna get slack, start cutting corners, taking liberties. That’s to be expected.”

Something deep inside Simon stirred. What else wasn’t being said here? He thought he knew all of the other mans’ tactics. This was new, and unsettling.

“I expect you to help me maintain military discipline amongst our personnel. If we set an example, show them what is acceptable and unacceptable in terms of maintaining long-term unit cohesion, then we might just make it out of this alive.” He took a step back, and Bates knew at that point what this was really all about. Distance. Their rapport, once so useful, could become a liability out there. “Can I count on you, Sergeant?”

And they were back to their unspoken understandings. He had snapped off a textbook “Sir, yes sir!” and the next day followed him across the universe as he had followed him on every campaign before. And the day after that, Bates was left wondering how one man could lead by example when their new commanding officer didn’t give a shit.

But he had given his word, so he did his best. And every day he was aware of the shade of Marshall Sumner standing watch by his side.

 

~~~  


**  
**4\. Lullabies for a Military Man __  
“The cry that Sorrow knows and would complain  
And impotently struggle to express --  
Some secret shame, some hidden bitterness --  
Yet evermore must sing the same refrain.”  


If they were any more obvious about it, they’d hang a banner across the gate room, proclaiming in big letters:

“Major Sheppard is fucking Rodney McKay”

He had watched them snark and bitch and flirt their way from crisis to crisis, seemingly oblivious to the comments and the knowing looks and the betting pool on when they’d announce their engagement.

Bates suspected Grodin was behind that latest book. It certainly stank of a geeks’ sense of humour.

But the book wasn’t what he had a problem with. He wondered, not for the first time, whether Sheppard had slept through officers training. Perhaps he skipped his classes and went to his hairdresser instead. There had to be a reason why the man had no sense of discretion or decorum or military conduct.

Bates didn’t care who the man was fucking, as long as it didn’t interfere with the execution of his duties. Fucking the chief science officer who was also a member of your field team definitely counted as conduct unbecoming.

He found it kind of disturbing that he was becoming mildly obsessed with his new CO’s sex life. But late at night, when his brain wouldn’t shut up about it, he found himself dissecting and analysing the situation from every angle until he fell asleep.

That night, he had dreamt of McKay and Sheppard in bed together. The next morning he couldn’t look Sheppard in the eye and had fled off-world on a barter mission as soon as Dr Weir had given them a go.

He channelled his energies into the mission, and took his triumphant team home eight hours later with a trade agreement and packs full of ‘samples’ as a gesture of goodwill from their new friends.

He had hoped he was too exhausted to dream. But again his subconscious threw up images that made his well-thumbed copy of Playboy seem tame in comparison. He woke in a cold sweat and went off to hit the punching bag in the gym until dawn.

The third night he forced himself to catch up on reports until his eyes burned with exhaustion before he headed for his bunk. In his dreams, two men twisted on khaki sheets under a starry sky, focussed totally on each other. He groaned to himself, twitching in his sleep as the two men in his dreams moaned to climax.

Then the two men rolled over and smiled at him. Bates woke with a horrified shout.

As soon as the sun was up, he’d go find Heightmeyer. No way could dreaming about Sheppard and Sumner inviting him for a threeway be considered sane.

 

~~~  


**  
**5\. Immolation _  
“Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,  
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.”  
_

Bates thought getting jumped by the Wraith was bad enough. Then he walked in on Dr Zelenka crying in the commissary and was again reminded that he hadn't had the worst personal week on Atlantis.

He had known about Zelenka and Grodin, of course. It was his job to know what was going on in the city. And Grodin was only the first of many who had died during the Wraith assault. Zelenka wasn’t the only one grieving tonight.

But those mourners had taken themselves away to quiet corners and had hidden themselves away behind locked doors. Where ever they were, they weren’t here.

Zelenka was here. Crying silently in a ghostly alien room with only a cold cup of coffee for company.

Bates paused on the threshold, torn between leaving again and sneaking in to get what he came for. He had slept, safely cosseted in his coma, through the entire Wraith assault; the least he could do was watch over the city while the real heroes settled into their deserved rest. But he was so damn tired already. One cup of coffee, then back on patrol. That was the plan. There was no room in it for a crying geek.

Zelenka cried quietly, the slight gasps for air the only noise in the silence that had settled like a shroud over the battered city. But he cried like a man who could freely give in to his grief.

Suddenly Bates was angry, incredibly angry. They all had reason to grieve. This damn galaxy had been picking them off for months. What right did this damn scientist have, embracing and acknowledging his pain when others had to suck it up, swallow it down, play soldier and never admit…

He sighed out, the anger gone as fast as it had arrived, leaving only a deep ache and a vague sense of kinship with the other man. They had nothing in common but their loss. He took half a step into the room, then stopped again. What could he say, when all was said and done?

_  
‘The pain doesn’t go away, but you learn to live with it.’_

_‘At least you knew what it felt like.’_

_‘Be grateful you had time.’_  
  
Zelenka turned around, eyes red-rimmed, face pale and taut with grief and fatigue. Bates looked at what he saw reflected there. He recognized every emotion.

He didn’t have to say anything, there was no need for crude and insufficient words. So he just nodded once, turned, and resumed his patrol around the sleeping city.

 

 

~~~~

Section heading quotes:

2\. Children’s poem (anon)  
3\. The Unknown Citizen (WH Auden)  
4\. Dreamland (Edgar Allen Poe)  
5\. Nocturne (Eugene O’Neill)  
6\. The Princess (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

 

 

 

 


End file.
